SD.net's World OOC/Discussion thread?

[Beowulf]

Weather satellites are LEO. A number of comm sats are LEO both because it's cheaper to launch, and you need smaller amplifiers, which translates into a small spacecraft, and therefore an even cheaper cost to launch. All manned space flight is in LEO (amongst other things, you avoid the Van Allen belts that way).

Your scenario doesn't work, BTW.

with a good SPYSAT resolution, you could make out the location of another nation's military objects, and no matter of concealment will save it from LEOSATS.

Understand what this means?

"I stage this R-7 polygon"

"Huand Di has determined it's precise location and fired a SCUD. [snip]"

"Shep intercepts SCUD, full scale war begins."

[MKSheppard]

Also, although you've committed to not shooting down objects lower than 1000 mi (most likely due to the fact that your ASATs can't kinematically hit something lower than that

What crack are you smoking?

I did my homework; a 12,000~ lb multi-stage missile with a 25 kg interceptor has more than enough delta v to hit anything up to the 1,000 mile limit - and since satellites are on even more predictable trajectories than missile-re-entry vehicles, I know exactly when and where your satellite will come over the horizon; allowing me to adjust the interceptor trajectory so that it can fly a flatter trajectory to hit lower altitude targets.

Sure, you could fuck my calculations up by changing your satellite's orbit, but you only get about one or two really major orbital changes before the on board fuel is gone; and your satellite is essentially pointless; since you can't slowly manouver it to where you want it to be.

[Beowulf]

Sorry, I meant higher than that. Complete and utter brain fart.

[Shroom Man 777]

For the sake of posterity I am reposting this wonderful declaration so I won't have to blow a gasket in figuring out how to fill in all those FCS and ACV orders...

THE ASTORIA POST

International Sea Commerce Agency proposed by PeZookian government

The Ministry of Trade has reacted to various proposals and concerns arising on the commercial shipping market by extending an offer to all nations engaged in ACV and FCS projects.

"The Ministry would like to propose a creation of a new generation of highly automated freighters in a displacement class unprecedented before on SD.net world. While the Fast Commerce Ships and Automated Commerce Vessels are an important milestone in the establishment of cross-SD commerce, they are but the first step.

The agency, as proposed by PeZookian Ministry Of Trade, would include the following steps:

1) Integration of ACV and FCS systems to enable production of a single, streamlined, fuel-efficient and low-crew ship model.

2) Joint manufacture and sales of said ships

3) Development of commercial shipyards in all member nations in order to allow production of ships in the 50 thousand tonne class

4) Shared R&D costs for development of new, fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly commerce ships

5) Joint ventures on the location and exploitation of sea resources in a sustainable way, and

6) Development of various ships other than freighters for civilian use: yachts, passenger liners, resource extraction ships.

A common budget would be established for the Agency, which would then allocate resources for investment and ship production. All profit from sales of commercial ships via the agency would be distributed equally amongst member nations.

Shroomania's 100% in on this!

[K. A. Pital]

Weather satellites are LEO.

Avoid the JSEZ; look over oceans. "Weather" satellites? How the hell would we know it's not a secret warsat program? On your good will?

And why does this proposal make so much noise? What, tight space budget? Why do you want to fly over JSEZ? Weather reports? Thanks, we could even subsidize smaller nations launches of WEATHERSATs with our high-yield boosters like Angara or Proton; but we stand on the sat limit and no way in hell it's going down.

Unless you start a war over it. Which would be the ultimate paranoia testament.

A number of comm sats are LEO both because it's cheaper to launch

What part of "more expensie, but safer" does the great lord of Tian Xia not understand?

All manned space flight is in LEO (amongst other things, you avoid the Van Allen belts that way).

Van Allen belts? We need to investigate this world's parameters of VA belts.

But not all similar planets have VA belts; and the inner belt is 4000 kms high, IIRC, so get up MEO and work in there.

[K. A. Pital]

Van Allen belts are a concern for manned spaceflight.

However, Beowulf's 100 mile proposal is NOT accepted.

Instead, 450 to 800 km for all manned vehicles limit is proposed; and for sats, the 1000 mi limit stays. This is the best LEO MSS (manned space ship) orbital interval and we feel the JSEZ needs to open it to ensure manned spaceflight.

[MKSheppard]

Instead, 450 to 800 km for all manned vehicles limit is proposed; and for sats, the 1000 mi limit stays. This is the best LEO MSS (manned space ship) orbital interval and we feel the JSEZ needs to open it to ensure manned spaceflight.

This is accceptable to Shepnukistan.

[RogueIce]

Van Allen belts are a concern for manned spaceflight.

However, Beowulf's 100 mile proposal is NOT accepted.

Instead, 450 to 800 km for all manned vehicles limit is proposed; and for sats, the 1000 mi limit stays. This is the best LEO MSS (manned space ship) orbital interval and we feel the JSEZ needs to open it to ensure manned spaceflight.

What about the NSC? Still on the table?

[Shroom Man 777]

We need someone to outline all those treaties proposed and ratified and plop them in that Reference or Alliance thread...

EDIT:

And those goddamn acronyms.

[K. A. Pital]

This is accceptable to Shepnukistan.

This is actually the optimal manned space station interval calculated by Lockheed Martin and their fellow Soviet competitor pals.

Up that, and you need radiatio shielding for habitats like space stations.

Low that, and you have an object which is either scheduled to fall out from orbit soon, or is propped by engines for long duration (clearest spy thing indication) which doesn't make sense for space stations.

What about the NSC? Still on the table?

If we solve it now and Beowulf is genuinely concerned about LEO space stations and humans as opposed to 100mi spysats, the issue ends there and NSC is not required really.

[Beowulf]

Paranoiacs find refuge in secrecy. Hence why Saddamistan is doing it's airspace thing. Anything a spysat can do, I can cause to be found out through covert actions.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the last benefit of LEO comm sats: higher bandwidth, because you can focus the beam more tightly, thus allowing more sats to use the same channels.

I'll make a counter proposal: 330km for manned spacecraft. This is inline with where the two most recent space stations orbit(ed). Also, a space craft may make a limited number of LEO orbits before being required to be boosted to GEO (if something goes wrong with the sat, you can check it out, and deorbit if necessary that way).

Operationally useful weather sats use a polar sun-synchronous orbit at 500mi. This necessarily requires that they pass through everyone's airspace at some point.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm... Zeppelins. The Coyote and the Bear both have them. Shroomania should try going for a Hindenburg.

[Master_Baerne]

Hrm... Zeppelins. The Coyote and the Bear both have them. Shroomania should try going for a Hindenburg.

Errr, Shroom, maybe that's not the best goal?

[Shroom Man 777]

With the wonders of helium, the only tragedy will be that the strickened crew of the Hindenburg (II!) will be shrieking like chipmunks. On fire.

[phongn]

The ITR strongly protests continued demands by the JSEZ for the exclusion of satellites from low-earth orbit. The ITR believes this action to be nothing less than flagrant and anticompetitive pressure against ITR telecommunications companies seeking to deploy cost-effective and reliable satellite communications systems to this world.

[K. A. Pital]

Paranoiacs find refuge in secrecy. Hence why Saddamistan is doing it's airspace thing. Anything a spysat can do, I can cause to be found out through covert actions.

No, you can't and you know full well. A national leader may have somehting to say about "spies" detecting anything, like Mangka had to say that Shadow OPS attacked not a weapon installation and it doesn't really have weapons no matter what they "found".

A SPYSAT, if something is announced as existing, can pinpoint that and there's fuck little you can do. End of story.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the last benefit of LEO comm sats: higher bandwidth, because you can focus the beam more tightly, thus allowing more sats to use the same channels.

Well so? I can understand Van Allen belts, but this - no. In the name of greater security we will sacrifice this.

I'll make a counter proposal: 330km for manned spacecraft. This is inline with where the two most recent space stations orbit(ed).

However, 330 km is suboptimal for space stations, whereas 450-800 is optimal. Why so low? Because of weak booster tech for most of years.

Once we get Proton, Angara or even Energia as the main boosters here, no LEO junk will be there.

Hey, I found a benefit there - NO LEO JUNK. Better and safer human space exploration.

Operationally useful weather sats use a polar sun-synchronous orbit at 500mi. This necessarily requires that they pass through everyone's airspace at some point.

Why? Can't the orbit be plotted so taht it doesn't? I mean, that's weird. We're the size of Africa, even less.

The ITR believes this action to be nothing less than flagrant and anticompetitive pressure against ITR telecommunications companies seeking to deploy cost-effective and reliable satellite communications systems to this world.

Secure versus cost-effective works best.

No, I just give up.

You object? Beowulf objects?

Fine! How about we dissolve the JSEZ and get back to "infinity plus one" rule, barring space research sans Sea Launch, and only to very high orbits?

I'm pissed off enough to actually act on this if you persist.

[Coyote]

How about a compromise?

A handful of satellites are placed in the best orbits for maximum weather-related info gathering-- and the data is beamed back to all nations' weather services alike?

Multinational inspection teams insure that these are weather-only satt's before they go up.

[K. A. Pital]

If they really want to play mean, how about this?

1) MAP 2009 is scrapped this very instant
2) All inner-JSEZ passing craft allowed to fly LEO

Like this proposal better than my first one? In case you do, just tell me. This is actually not too hard to arrange.

*grumbles*

How about a compromise?

A handful of satellites are placed in the best orbits for maximum weather-related info gathering-- and the data is beamed back to all nations' weather services alike?

Looks like the Neutral Space Center is back on schedule after all; only NCS launches, only approved, so no spysats ever enter and junk LEO.

This proposal is also on hands. In fact I will support that.

So who wants what here, really?

[RogueIce]

Utilizing the Neutral Space Center idea for any LEO satellites would work you guys. I'm disappointed only me and Stas have even seemed to notice it was proposed.

I mean think about it, if we all contribute to it, then even small nations can send up satellites themselves, without having to be tied to another country or try to foot the bill for a full space program on their own.

The benefits of this are beyond simply allowing LEO satellites out there without all this grief. What is so objectionable to that?

[K. A. Pital]

yeah, that's a good idea RogueIce. I support that. The NSC declared unbribeable and etc. for game purposes. Actually if it were a real multinational scientific body it could hardly be made to launch a military craft unwittingly.

The NSC should have a measure of control or at least surv. over the NSC-launched sats.

That is all I think now, and I'm all for it.

Now it's up to the objecting parties to voice what they will.

[RogueIce]

yeah, that's a good idea RogueIce. I support that. The NSC declared unbribeable and etc. for game purposes. Actually if it were a real multinational scientific body it could hardly be made to launch a military craft unwittingly.

The NSC should have a measure of control or at least surv. over the NSC-launched sats.

That is all I think now, and I'm all for it.

Now it's up to the objecting parties to voice what they will.

Indeed. And with some good planning and support, it can maybe standardize certain things. As Coyote alluded to, do we really need 10 different countries sending up 10 different weather satellite systems? Or can the NSC set one up for all to use, and distribute the data freely to all?

Same could be said of GPS for the ACVs, FCSs, Coyote's automated zeppelins, etc...

[Coyote]

I agreed as well in PM, making it public here. A neutral launch point by SeaLaunch barge or at Neutrality Point, and share dinformation from the joint weather satellites.

If we make nice, we can even agree on a sort of "Google-Earth" like project, and make civilian satellites with a purposefully low pixel-resolution. Combine it with a GPS system which we'll all benefit from.

[phongn]

Why? Can't the orbit be plotted so taht it doesn't? I mean, that's weird. We're the size of Africa, even less.

What does that have to do with anything? North America and Europe are smaller than Africa and still have sun-synchronous low-altitude weather satellites (as well as other types, like geostationary ones).

Secure versus cost-effective works best.

(snip)

I'm pissed off enough to actually act on this if you persist.

How are you improving security at all? Someone might just eat the cost and throw up a huge observation satellite into a medium-altitude polar orbit anyways! It's completely and totally absurd to ban LEO when there are useful purposes unrelated to war.

[K. A. Pital]

Fine; by that virtue, how about making the N.S.C. over the J.S.E.Z. umbrella, and scrap the JSEZ then?

It's a more simple rule; and it actually works:

1) Launch a LEO sat and fly it over us and it's GONE
2) Launch a LEO sat from NSC and it is flying OK since we know no spy stuff is there [NSC must control transmissions to and from SAT: they must be open and non-encoded, and the NSC would see what's in there]

As for GPS... I don't know honestly. I try my best, but the threat of war never fades.

Okay, so this is the proposal: starting 2009, JSEZ is reformed into NSC Authority. This entity never changes actually and would require no game management; essentially a real-life common rule

But shall we notice "we launch LEO sat" from anyone, it's down.

[K. A. Pital]

Someone might just eat the cost and throw up a huge observation satellite into a medium-altitude polar orbit anyways!

XX century systems won't give him enough resolution to get a fine enough grip on things; we actually calced the stuff with Shep. SO there's a sense to it, don't think it's STOOPID.